Part Thirty: Jonah
Jonah had started to think that he should become a spy when he left school. He clearly had a talent for living a double life. By day, he was a sixth former, preoccupied with exams and deadlines and coursework, by night, he was an adult with a partner and all the responsibilities which went with that. Cesca never made allowances for the fact that he was only seventeen. She expected of him everything that she would expect of a partner her own age and he liked being treated like that. He didn't want her to look after him, or shield him from things. He wanted an equal partnership with her.
And, more and more, that was what they had. They understood each, anticipated each other's needs and desires, helped each other comforted each other, were there for each other. She let him look after her, understood that it was important to him to do that, knew that he needed to feel that none of the boundaries of the classroom had followed them home. Whenever she made a decision she consulted him, respected his opinion, valued his advice.
It was becoming harder and harder for him to treat her as a teacher at school. Sometimes he would answer back in lessons without really realizing what he was doing or the awkward position he was putting her in. She could hardly send him to the cooler and, equally, she couldn't treat him any differently from Ronan or Vicki or the others in his class. Eventually, he took to simply keeping silent in Spanish lessons. It was easier that way.
Ignoring her at school was painful. Whenever he blanked her in a corridor, he felt guilty for the rest of the day, whenever she blanked him, he felt a stabbing pain in the vicinity of his stomach. And yet he could do nothing except blank her because any sign of recognition between them was sure to give away their familiarity with each other. They had long since stopped clandestinely meeting in deserted classrooms and corridors. Before the baby, before feelings had become involved, such secret meetings had seemed fun, had been intoxicating almost, but now there was simply too much at stake.
Instead, they spent all their time together outside of school. Cesca's house became their private world. They would spend afternoons and long, lazy evenings cocooned in her bed or lying side-by-side on her sofa. And they would talk for hours. Jonah had never talked in this way with anyone before. At first, he had been attracted to Cesca for the way she looked, for the way she spoke and acted, but now he loved her for her mind. He was beginning to understand the way she thought, beginning to be able to anticipate her reactions and, at the same time, he was still surprised by her. She was a woman of deep emotions. She was capable of kindness of a degree which he had never encountered before. She didn't fall in love easily, but, when she did, she fell in love absolutely and completely. Jonah knew that she had given herself to him entirely. And he gave himself in return.
Their minds and souls were intertwined now. Life without the other was unthinkable. And they each began to change to further compliment the other. Jonah could feel himself gaining some of Cesca's inner calm, almost forgetting how it felt to be angry. He felt content with the world, entirely fulfilled.
Time passed. The earth turned and the seasons changed. Dreary February was replaced by a fierce, windy March and then an April made up of thunderstorms and rainclouds. At school, pupils took to sheltering inside at breaktimes and spending the days bundled up in coats and hats. They dreamed of sunshine and warm weather and felt as though spring would never come.
Jonah was the only one who didn't notice the rain or the wind. His world seemed always to be filled with sunlight. His relationship with Cesca grew stronger and better and each day brought him closer to the time when he could leave school and they could finally behave as a normal couple. The baby was starting to make its presence felt now. Everyone knew that Cesca was pregnant and the corridors were ablaze with rumours about the father of her child. Most of the students seemed to believe Tom was responsible. As the rumours got wilder, stories started to circulate that Tom and Cesca were secretly married, that they had eloped and not told anyone. At first Jonah hated these rumours. He feared that Cesca still had latent feelings for Tom, but, as it became clear that she had no such feelings, Jonah began to find the whole thing faintly amusing. He felt a thrill whenever he thought of the baby and he delighted in the fact that he and Cesca had a secret of such magnitude which was all their own.
April gave way to an unseasonably cold May and, still dressed in winter coats, students began, reluctantly, to revise. Stress levels rose, teachers became snappy and Cesca's baby was forgotten as talk of exams and university places replaced gossip. These were conversations which Jonah could join in with. Cesca was determined that he should go to university and they were trying to choose between his five offers. He'd always liked the idea of Manchester because it was close to home, but now, that seemed to be a reason to turn the offer down. Both he and Cesca needed to be somewhere they wouldn't be recognized. Leeds and Sheffield might still be too close. Edinburgh was appealing, but Ronan and Vicki were hoping to go there. Again, in the past, that would have been a reason to chose it, but not anymore. He and Cesca needed to completely leave their old lives behind. His fifth offer was from Oxford. It was further from home than he wanted to be and he feared he wouldn't fit in there, but at least no one would recognize him. And Cesca was keen on the idea. Increasingly, her approval was the thing which mattered the most to him.
He put off replying to the university offers and May became June and still the sun refused to shine. Exams began, but Jonah was finding it harder and harder to concentrate. All his thoughts were of Cesca now. She was finding the last part of her pregnancy difficult and he just wanted to be with her all the time, wanting to constantly be checking that she was ok. She tried to hide her discomfort from him, but he had become too perceptive to her moods to be fooled for long. He would go home with her every night, make her dinner, massage her aching back and tell her that he loved her. He worried that perhaps she regretted her decision to keep the baby, despite her assurances to the contrary.
As June ended and July began, the sun finally started to break through the clouds, bathing the world in a warm, soothing glow and, with it, Cesca became brighter, happier. She was still tired, but she seemed more comfortable now, filled with energy. Jonah relaxed again, began to study properly again. He was filled with a kind of bubbling excitement all the time now. July was the month in which his world would change; he would turn eighteen, .eave school, and, more importantly, his baby would be born and he would finally be free to be with Cesca.
